The journal Intensive Care Medicine rapidly marches to the highest ranks of impact factors, going from 5.3 in 2012 to 10.1 in 2015.
That’s excellent news for the journal and its society (ESICM), but how did this happen? I was associate-editor of ICM for infectious diseases between 2006 and 2012, which I tremendously enjoyed.Yet, I remember submission of only a single randomized study in that field in that period. Almost all submissions that I got for evaluation (about 100/year) were observational studies, presented as prospective but in fact using care data that were retrospectively analyzed, and – I think – then prospectively linked to a research question. The journal ranked number 5, or something, in its category and for quality this was as good as it gets. So, how to break that cycle: Here are some tricks, some of which were used by the journal, some were not:
- When you return a manuscript for revision specifically ask the authors to cite recent studies from your own journal.
- Publish “the year in review” in which you cite all articles published in your own journal.
- Invite people to submit reviews and meta-analyses (and publish them, even if they don’t add insights to the field).
- Publish ahead of print rapidly and leave it there as long as possible. Citations will be counted, but the period of counting for ther impact factor only starts when its published “on paper”.
- Let your society make guidelines (and publish them, even if they don’t add anything to existing guidelines, published in other journals).
This is how it works and how many journals work. The good news (for ICM) is that their new impact factor more randomized trials and other high-quality studies will be submitted. So, now they could set an example by stopping to game the system (if they did) and be a true top European scientific journal.Or let all editors unaware of this start gaming.
marcbonten 